Abstract

Tuesday September 12, 2023

@12noon – 1pm CST | 19:00 – 20:00 CET

A Performance Lecture

My name is Emily Peasgood. I am a sound artist and composer creating site-specific, outdoor artworks with communities. I am currently exhibiting an artwork titled *I Would Rather Walk With You* in Fort Burgoyne, Dover. This work captures what the fort sounded like in the 1800s and features sounds created with the local community.

I have installed works in a variety of outdoor public places, including graveyards, ancient sites and on public transport. Working in communities is at the heart of my practice, along with making art accessible to members of the public. I researched ‘Creating Accessible, Inclusive and Engaging Musical Artworks Through Experimental Processes in the Community’ for my PhD. This provided a unique insight into creating public artwork from the perspective of both an artist and an academic. When I create work, I am involved in each stage of the creative process from designing a work to collaborating with members of the public in its creation. I am interested in not just engaging people, but also considering how to present opportunities in ways that actually make them want to take part.

In this artist presentation I will discuss and present how I created I Would Rather Walk With You with members of the local community. This is a sonic artwork that plays through the walls of part of a Victorian defence fort. It features a choral work, and stories and soundscapes created with members of public during first lockdown in 2020. It was installed in 2022 at the West Wing Battery of Fort Burgoyne in Dover, near Dover Castle, and was launched to the public in March 2023. It was commissioned by Pioneering Places East Kent and funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England.

As part of the creative process, I engaged communities who live near or have a connection with Fort Burgoyne. I used a variety of imaginative methods to engage people and help them contribute to community-generated material. I originally planned to create sounds to feature in the work at historical re-enactment workshops at the fort. However, due to the lockdown I had to adapt to the circumstances and created an open call campaign, spending a lot of time creating guidelines for people to record sounds on their mobile telephones. I made video tutorials and devised listening exercises and ‘10 Tips for Mobile Phone Recording’ and put a lot of time into building connections with the local community. I facilitated a series of online sessions in which I taught local people to record high quality sounds on personal devices like phones and tablets so they could go out and record their own sound effects. I created scripts for them, games that generated ideas, and they took part in online workshops and feedback sessions to learn how to undertake the task.

This resulted in the creation of a wide range of sonic material that became part of the final artwork, including 400 recordings created with 200 local residents and children during the first lockdown in 2020. You will hear some of the things people recorded during this presentation, and we will discuss why this engagement method was suitable in this context.